The Satanic Verses (50 page)

           
"Poor bastard," said the Mohican and threw a coin into Farishta's
fallen hat. He walked on; the kindly, twinkling lady, however, leaned
confidentially towards Gibreel and passed him a leaflet. "You'll be
interested in this." He quickly identified it as a racist text demanding
the "repatriation" of the country's black citizenry. She took him, he
deduced, for a white angel. So angels were not exempt from such categories, he
wonderingly learned. "Look at it this way," the woman was saying,
taking his silence for uncertainty―and revealing, by slipping into an
overarticulated, over-loud mode of delivery, that she thought him not quite
pukka, a Levantine angel, maybe, Cypriot or Greek, in need of her best
talking-to-the-afflicted voice. "If they came over and filled up wherever
you come from, well! You wouldn't like
that
."

           
* * * * *

           
Punched in the nose, taunted by phantoms, given alms instead of reverence, and
in divers ways shewn the depths to which the denizens of the city had sunk, the
intransigence of "the evil manifest there, Gibreel became more determined
than ever to commence the doing of good, to initiate the great work of rolling
back the frontiers of the adversary's dominion. The atlas in his pocket was his
master-plan. He would redeem the city square by square, from Hockley Farm in
the north-west corner of the charted area to Chance Wood in the south-east;
after which, perhaps. he would celebrate the conclusion of his labours by
playing a round of golf at the aptly named course situated at the very edge of
the map: Wildernesse.

           
And somewhere along the way the adversary himself would be waiting. Shaitan,
Iblis, or whatever name he had adopted―and in point of fact that name was
on the tip of Gibreel's tongue―just as the face of the adversary, horned
and malevolent, was still somewhat out of focus . . . well, it would take shape
soon enough, and the name would come back, Gibreel was sure of it, for were not
his powers growing every day, was he not the one who, restored to his glory,
would hurl the adversary down, once more, into the Darkest Deeps?―That
name: what was it? Tchsomething? Tchu Tche Tchin Tchow. No matter. All in good
time.

           
* * * * *

           
But the city in its corruption refused to submit to the dominion of the
cartographers, changing shape at will and without warning, making it impossible
for Gibreel to approach his quest in the systematic manner he would have preferred.
Some days he would turn a corner at the end of a grand colonnade built of human
flesh and covered in skin that bled when scratched, and find himself in an
uncharted wasteland, at whose distant rim he could see tall familiar buildings,
Wren's dome, the high metallic spark-plug of the Telecom Tower, crumbling in
the wind like sandcastles. He would stumble across bewildering and anonymous
parks and emerge into the crowded streets of the West End, upon which, to the
consternation of the motorists, acid had begun to drip from the sky, burning
great holes in the surfaces of the roads. In this pandemonium of mirages he
often heard laughter: the city was mocking his impotence, awaiting his
surrender, his recognition that what existed here was beyond his powers to
comprehend, let alone to change. He shouted curses at his still-faceless
adversary, pleaded with the Deity for a further sign, feared that his energies
might, in truth, never be equal to the task. In brief, he was becoming the most
wretched and bedraggled of archangels, his garments filthy, his hair lank and
greasy, his chin sprouting hair in uncontrollable tufts. It was in this sorry
condition that he arrived at the Angel Underground.

           
It must have been early in the morning, because the station staff drifted up as
he watched, to unlock and then roll back the metal grille of night. He followed
them in, shuffling along, head low, hands deep in pockets (the Street atlas had
been discarded long ago); and raising his eyes at last, found himself looking
into a face on the verge of dissolving into tears.

           
"Good morning," he ventured, and the young woman in the ticket office
responded bitterly, "What's good about it, that's what I want to
know," and now her tears did come, plump, globular and plenteous.
"There, there, child," he said, and she gave him a disbelieving look.
"You're no priest," she opined. He answered, a little tentatively:
"I am the Angel, Gibreel." She began to laugh, as abruptly as she had
wept. "Only angels roun here hang from the lamp-posts at Christmas.
Illuminations. Only the Council swing them by their necks." He was not to
be put off. "I am Gibreel," he repeated, fixing her with his eye.
"Recite." And, to her own emphatically expressed astonishment,
I
cyaan believe I doin this, emptyin my heart to some tramp, I not like this, you
know
, the ticket clerk began to speak.

           
Her name was Orphia Phillips, twenty years old, both parents alive and
dependent on her, especially now that her fool sister Hyacinth had lost her job
as a physiotherapist by "gettin up to she nonsense". The young man's
name, for of course there was a young man, was Uriah Moseley. The station had
recently installed two gleaming new elevators and Orphia and Uriah were their
operators. During rush-hours, when both lifts were working, they had little
time for conversation; but for the rest of the day, only one lift was used.
Orphia took up her position at the ticket-collection point just along from the
elevator-shaft, and Uri managed to spend a good deal of time down there with
her, leaning against the door-jamb of his gleaming lift and picking his teeth
with the silver toothpick his great-grandfather had liberated from some
old-time plantation boss. It was true love. "But I jus get carry away,"
Orphia wailed at Gibreel. "I always too hasty for sense." One
afternoon, during a lull, she had deserted her post and stepped up right in
front of him as he leaned and picked teeth, and seeing the look in her eye he
put away the pick. After that he came to work with a spring in his step; she,
too, was in heaven as she descended each day into the bowels of the earth.
Their kisses grew longer and more passionate. Sometimes she would not detach
himself when the buzzer rang for the lift; Uriah would have to push her back,
with a cry of, "Cool off, girl, the public." Uriah had a vocational
attitude to his work. He spoke to her of his pride in his uniform, of his
satisfaction at being in the public service, giving his life to society. She
thought he sounded a shade pompous, and wanted to say, "Uri, man, you jus
a elevator boy here," but intuiting that such realism would not be well
received, she held her troublesome tongue, or, rather, pushed it into his
mouth.

           
Their embraces in the tunnel became wars. Now he was trying to get away,
straightening his tunic, while she bit his ear and pushed her hand down inside
his trousers. "You crazy," he said, but she, continuing, inquired:
"So? You vex?"

           
They were, inevitably, caught: a complaint was lodged by a kindly lady in
headscarf and tweeds. They had been lucky to keep their jobs. Orphia had been
"grounded", deprived of elevator-shafts and boxed into the ticket
booth. Worse still, her place had been taken by the station beauty, Rochelle
Watkins. "I know what goin on," she cried angrily. "I see
Rochelle expression when she come up, fixin up her hair an all o"
dat." Uriah, nowadays, avoided Orphia's eyes.

           
"Can't figure out how you get me to tell you me business," she
concluded, uncertainly. "You not no angel. That is for sure." But she
was unable, try as she might, to break away from his transfixing gaze. "I
know," he told her, "what is in your heart."

           
He reached in through the booth's window and took her unresisting
hand.―Yes, this was it, the force of her desires filling him up, enabling
him to translate them back to her, making action possible, allowing her to say
and do what she most profoundly required; this was what he remembered, this
quality of being joined to the one to whom he appeared, so that what followed
was the product of their joining. At last, he thought, the archangelic
functions return.―Inside the ticket booth, the clerk Orphia Phillips had
her eyes closed, her body had slumped down in her chair, looking slow and heavy,
and her lips were moving.―And his own, in unison with hers.―There.
It was done.

           
At this moment the station manager, a little angry man with nine long hairs,
fetched from ear-level, plastered across his baldness, burst like a cuckoo from
his little door. "What's your game?" he shouted at Gibreel. "Get
out of it before I call the police." Gibreel stayed where he was. The
station manager saw Orphia emerging from her trance and began to shriek.
"You, Phillips. Never saw the like. Anything in trousers, but this is
ridiculous. All my born days. And nodding off on the job, the idea."
Orphia stood up, put on her raincoat, picked up her folding umbrella, emerged
from ticket booth. "Leaving public property unattended. You get back in
there this minute, or it's your job, sure as eggsis." Orphia headed for
the spiral stairs and moved towards the lower depths. Deprived of his employee,
the manager swung round to face Gibreel. "Go on," he said. "Eff
off. Go crawl back under your stone."

           
"I am waiting," replied Gibreel with dignity, "for the
lift."

           
When she reached the bottom of the stairs, Orphia Phillips turning a corner saw
Uriah Moseley leaning against the ticket collection booth in that way he had,
and Rochelle Watkins simpering with delight. But Orphia knew what to do.
"You let "Chelle feel you toothpick yet, Uri?" she sang out.
"She'd surely love to hold it."

           
They both straightened up, stung. Uriah began blustering: "Don't be so
common now, Orphia," but her eyes stopped him in his tracks. Then he began
to walk towards her, dreamily, leaving Rochelle flat. "Thas right,
Uri," she said softly, never looking away from him for an instant.
"Come along now. Come to momma."
Now walk backwards to the lift
and just suck him right in there, and after that it's up and away we go
.―But
something was wrong here. He wasn't walking any more. Rochelle Watkins was
standing beside him, too damn close, and he'd come to a halt. "You tell
her, Uriah," Rochelle said. "Her stupid obeah don't signify down
here." Uriah was putting an arm around Rochelle Watkins. This wasn't the
way she'd dreamed it, the way she'd suddenly been certain-sure it would be,
after that Gibreel took her hand, just like that, as if they were
intended
;
wee-yurd, she thought; what was happening to her? She advanced.―"Get
her offa me, Uriah," Rochelle shouted. "She mashin up me uniform and
all."―Now Uriah, holding the struggling ticket clerk by both wrists,
gave out the news: "I aks her to get marry!"―Whereupon the
fight went out of Orphia. Beaded plaits no longer whirled and clicked. "So
you out of order, Orphia Phillips," Uriah continued, puffing somewhat.
"And like the lady say, no obeah na change nutten." Orphia, also
breathing heavily, her clothes disarranged, flopped down on the floor with her
back to the curved tunnel wall. The noise of a train pulling in came up towards
them; the affianced couple hurried to their posts, tidying themselves up,
leaving Orphia where she sat. "Girl," Uriah Moseley offered by way of
farewell, "you too damn outrageous for me." Rochelle Watkins blew
Uriah a kiss from her ticket-collection booth; he, lounging against his lift,
picked his teeth. "Home cooking," Rochelle promised him. "And no
surprises."

           
"You filthy bum," Orphia Phillips screamed at Gibreel after walking
up the two hundred and forty-seven steps of the spiral staircase of defeat.
"You no good devil bum. Who ask you to mash up me life so?"

           
* * * * *

           
Even the halo has gone out, like a broken bulb, and I don't know where's the
store
. Gibreel on a bench in the small park near the station meditated over
the futility of his efforts to date. And found blasphemies surfacing once
again: if the dabba had the wrong markings and so went to incorrect recipient,
was the dabbawalla to blame? If special effect―travelling mat, or
such―didn't work, and you saw the blue outline shimmering at the edge of
the flying fellow, how to blame the actor? Bythesametoken, if his angeling was
proving insufficient, whose fault, please, was this? His, personally, or some
other Personage?―Children were playing in the garden of his doubting,
among the midge-clouds and rosebushes and despair. Grandmother's footsteps,
ghostbusters, tag. Ellowen deeowen, London. The fall of angels, Gibreel
reflected, was not the same kettle as the Tumble of Woman and Man. In the case
of human persons, the issue had been morality. Of the fruit of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil they shouldst not eat, and ate. Woman first, and at
her suggestion man, acquired the verboten ethical standards, tastily
apple-flavoured: the serpent brought them a value system. Enabling them, among
other things, to judge the Deity Itself, making possible in good time all the
awkward inquiries: why evil? Why suffering? Why death?―So, out they went.
It didn't want Its pretty creatures getting above their station.―Children
giggled in his face:
something straaange in the neighbourhood
. Armed
with zapguns, they made as if to bust him like some common, lowdown spook.
Come
away from there
, a woman commanded, a tightly groomed woman, white, a
redhead, with a broad stripe of freckles across the middle of her face; her
voice was full of distaste.
Did you hear me? Now!
―Whereas the
angels' crash was a simple matter of power: a straightforward piece of
celestial police work, punishment for rebellion, good and tough "pour
encourager les autres".―Then how unconfident of Itself this Deity
was, Who didn't want Its finest creations to know right from wrong; and Who
reigned by terror, insisting upon the unqualified submission of even Its
closest associates, packing off all dissidents to Its blazing Siberias, the
gulag-infernos of Hell. . . he checked himself. These were satanic thoughts,
put into his head by Iblis-Beelzebub-Shaitan. If the Entity were still
punishing him for his earlier lapse of faith, this was no way to earn
remission. He must simply continue until, purified, he felt his full potency
restored. Emptying his mind, he sat in the gathering darkness and watched the
children (now at some distance) play.
Ip-dipsky-blue who's-there-not-you
not-because-you're-dirty not-because-you're-clean
, and here, he was sure,
one of the boys, a grave eleven-year-old with outsize eyes, stared straight at
him:
my-mother-says you're-the-fairy-queen
.